Regardless of how you feel about daily stand-ups, team meetings, project meetings, client meetings, and every other kind of workplace meeting that takes up your time, they’re part of doing business and building professional relationships.
- Meetings are opportunities to be visible and connect with and make a positive impression on colleagues, teammates, your boss, clients, customers, and even broader company leadership.
- For remote workers who don’t have the benefit of in-office or lunchtime conversations and banter, seizing opportunities to connect, contribute, and shine in meetings becomes even more vital.
While they may feel tedious, you can’t ignore the fact that meetings play a significant role in the advancement of your career. Learning how to speak up and stand out in meetings will help you not only avoid being a work wallflower but also control your professional narrative and shape how others see you.
The impact of being a wallflower at work
How do you show up in meetings and at work and interact with others? Are you involved, visible, seen, and heard? Or, are you on the sidelines, invisible, overlooked, and ignored? Depending on your answer, you’re either an office star or an office wallflower.
- Office stars use their voices to speak up in work meetings and ask questions, share ideas, confirm details, offer opinions, and contribute value. They seem to shine and everyone notices them.
- Office wallflowers stay quiet in meetings, listening and letting coworkers have the floor. They don’t speak up, share opinions, ask questions, or contribute value. They blend in and often go unnoticed.
You’ve likely heard the term wallflower used to describe a shy person who doesn’t get involved and keeps to themselves. In the workplace, it refers to those who avoid opportunities for visibility, like standing out in meetings, to minimize potential judgment, scrutiny, and negative feedback.
Speaking up in meetings can feel like stepping into the spotlight. It can mimic the same feelings associated with public speaking. When you consider that the National Social Anxiety Center (NSAC) ranks public speaking as the number one phobia (ahead of death), it’s not surprising some people are more comfortable staying in the background.
The thing is, being a work wallflower can undermine your perceived value, professional reputation, and career success.
Misconceptions about standing out in meetings
It’s easy to equate being a meeting star with being extroverted or loud, or simply saying a lot. But that’s not necessarily true. You don’t need to be a key player or the center of attention in a meeting to be noticed and seen as a valuable contributor. You also don’t have to have lots of ideas or opinions.
You can’t be intimidated by more dominant personalities or let fear, anxiety, or insecurity hold you back from engaging in a discussion or participating in your way.
If you’ve ever thought to yourself:
- They have no idea how much I do or contribute!
- How come I wasn’t considered for that role/opportunity?
- Everyone always listens to Janelle.
- That’s what I was going to say. I should have spoken up sooner.
- George only got promoted because of who he knows.
You’re probably right.
Visibility creates opportunity
Professional success isn’t just about doing your job well. The right people must also recognize the work you do, understand the impact of your work, see how amazing you are, and decide they like you.
Beyond doing great work, you also have to talk about your great work and demonstrate your knowledge and skills in meetings whenever possible.
You’ve probably heard the saying, “80% of success comes from just showing up.” You have likely also experienced this first-hand:
- You have been granted an opportunity because you were in the right place at the right time.
- You have watched someone less skilled get offered an opportunity simply because they’re more well-known.
Either way, the proof is in the pudding:
Visibility opens doors to professional opportunity and the easiest way to become more visible is to speak up in and add value to, the meetings you attend.
What you say and how you say it matters
The value you bring to a meeting isn’t based on how much you say, it’s based on the quality and impact of what you say. It’s okay to listen, pay attention to what others say, collect your thoughts, and engage when you have something meaningful to share or important to ask.
You want to be remembered for the impact of your words and the value of your contributions, not for talking too much or creating noise — and sometimes that means saying more by saying less.
How to discover the value of your voice
Your authentic voice is powerful and you are capable of extraordinary things. The specific strengths and unique perspective you bring to a team make a difference and when you share your gifts in meetings, you help drive extraordinary outcomes.
If you’re not sure that’s true for you, rest assured, you just haven’t yet found your true voice or gained the confidence you need to use it.
Luckily, that’s where our Motivation Code assessment can help.
When you discover your MCode, you gain clarity about who you are, how you’re motivated, and what drives you to contribute maximum value. And, if you choose the MCode Premium report, you also get access to personalized resources to help you apply your MCode at work and in meetings. This includes language for expressing yourself fully, communicating your value, highlighting your strengths, and speaking about what you do best.
A better understanding of your core motivations and how you authentically show up can be game-changing because the intersection of your internal drivers and external expression is where you are most likely to gain the trust, respect, and ears of your coworkers.
Why is that?
With greater self-awareness, you can align your thoughts, decisions, actions, and words with what energizes you and lights you up — and when you light up, you communicate with confidence and shine.
How to shine in team meetings
The good news is that shining in team meetings isn’t as difficult as you might think. You have everything you need to be a respected, recognized high performer and valuable member of the team inside you already. Now you need to learn to use your strengths to put your best foot forward and stand out in meetings.
Here are nine ways you can stand out and shine in your next meeting:
- Be confident:
The day before or the morning of a big meeting, review your MCode results to remind yourself of your natural strengths, unique motivational advantages, and specific areas you are wired to contribute the most value. Then, skip to the back of your report to read the achievement stories you shared when taking the assessment and let your accomplishments give you confidence. - Prepare in advance:
Review the meeting attendees and meeting agenda in advance. Prepare for the discussion and if you have access to participants’ MCode results, review those too. Knowing what motivates the meeting leader and key stakeholders can help you shape your comments and contributions to have maximum value. - Arrive early:
Punctuality is professional. It communicates dependability and enhances trust. It also provides opportunities to engage in pre-meeting banter with coworkers, get to know them better, talk shop (and share the work you’re doing), and strengthen workplace relationships. - Sit strategically:
Don’t wait to find your seat and risk ending up in the back or off to the side. Choose your seat early to ensure you’re in the meeting leaders’ sightline, or wait for key players to find their seats and sit next to them. - Be present:
Put your phone on silent, eliminate all distractions, and do not multitask. Be fully present and pay attention to the small details, which are easily overlooked in group meetings. - Listen and take notes:
Don’t listen for your turn to talk. Listen strategically. Understand what is being said, try to pick up on nuance, and take notes. People who take notes inspire greater trust and confidence. - Speak with your body:
Your body language in meetings makes a difference. Dress appropriately, sit up straight, make eye contact, watch your facial expressions, and smile — be professional and approachable. - Speak strategically:
When you have something meaningful to say, speak up. Look for opportunities to lean into your motivations and what naturally lights you up. Ask a question, build upon someone else’s idea, share an opinion or solution, highlight something that may have been overlooked, share information others might not have. Again, it’s not about having a lot to say; it’s about having something of worth to say. - Follow up:
If action items were identified in the meeting and you have any role in making them happen, follow up after the meeting and show you’re on it or ready to collaborate with your team. This follow-up message is a great place to show initiative and highlight an additional idea or suggestion.
How to get noticed in virtual meetings
While many of the tips to stand out in meetings also apply to virtual meetings, some different dynamics come into play when meeting via video services like Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and Zoom. With Upwork predicting that 32.6 million Americans will work remotely by 2025, and hybrid work cultures becoming more widely adopted, mastering the nuances of shing in virtual meetings is a skill that will pay off.
Appear professional and polished
Working at home may come with perks like working in your pajamas, but be careful not to get too casual (at least from the waist up). Even if you’re not technically “at work,” a work meeting requires a professional appearance, especially if you’re upwardly mobile.
Does this mean you have to don office attire like suits, ties, and silk blouses? No. It means you need to appear polished — and that can be done with a basic button front or even a simple shirt with clean lines.
Just remember that when you dress to impress, you naturally feel more confident, and dressing in something that makes you feel good, helps you feel more comfortable being you.
Prepare your workspace for meetings
When entering a video meeting with your camera on, everyone else in the meeting is invited into your home office or remote work location. How you appear on camera and what is shown in your background affects how others perceive you.
Before your next company meeting:
- Evaluate your video background.
Stand at your computer, turn around, look at your background, and assess what other people see. Remove distractions, clear out the clutter, and make sure your space is clean and tidy. If you don’t have a distraction-free background, try using a virtual background. Your goal is to keep attention on you, not your background. - Assess your lighting and sound.
Bad lighting makes everyone look worse, bad sound makes it difficult for others to hear or understand you, and together, they diminish your professionalism and credibility. Invest in good lighting or sit near a window to take advantage of natural light, and play with your sound to ensure your voice comes across clearly. - Check your camera position.
How you’re positioned within a video meeting window matters. If your webcam is too low, meeting attendees will feel as if they’re looking up your nose. If your webcam is too high, the extra space above your head will make it seem like you’re a child sitting at the grown-up’s table. Your webcam should sit at eye level and you should fill the vertical height of the window.
Resist the temptation to multitask
When sitting at your computer during a virtual meeting, it can be tempting to check your email, respond to a Slack message, or get a bit of work done while listening. Don’t do it! The distraction of working during a meeting can cause you to miss important details and opportunities to contribute and impress. To others, your lack of attention and focus can also feel disrespectful or rude.
Make a great impression in every meeting
As a professional, you want to be seen as professional, credible, trustworthy, and capable, and developing your workplace reputation starts with how you show up at work and in meetings.
- The more confident you are in meetings, the more you’ll speak up and stand out.
- The more you speak up and stand out, the more visible you’ll be.
- The more visible you are, the more you’ll be recognized and acknowledged for your meeting contributions.
- The more recognition and acknowledgement you receive the more confident you’ll feel.
Bottom line: Impressing others in meetings starts with feeling confident in what you bring to the table as a team member, and that’s what Motivation Code helps people like you do each day.
When you complete the Motivation Code assessment and discover your MCode, you learn your unique competitive advantage — how you’re naturally wired to shine, and what drives you to do your best work.
When teams complete an MCode team assessment and training experience, leaders and team members better understand each other, which leads to improved collaboration and communication, accelerated outcomes, and deeper fulfillment.Try the Motivation Code assessment yourself today or reach out to our team to learn more about setting your team up for success.
